Sign In
By signing in or creating an account, you agree with Associated Broadcasting Company's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
By signing in or creating an account, you agree with Associated Broadcasting Company's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Thiruvananthapuram: “Kerala is now free from extreme poverty”, said Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the assembly as the state celebrate the ‘Kerala Piravi’ or state formation day. Pinarayi’s proclamation in the assembly comes in the absence of the Opposition UDF who walked out calling it a fraud.
Even before the CM got up to make his statement, the UDF declared a boycott. "The claim that Kerala is free of extreme poverty is a big fraud. We cannot be party to this fraud. So we are boycotting the day's proceedings," Opposition Leader V D Satheeshan said and led the walk out.
"We are presenting yet another model before the country. Kerala is the lab for various kinds of welfare activities. We hope that our experiments to root out extreme poverty, too, would be an example for other states to follow," the Chief Minister said, reading out from the text of a resolution made under Rule 300 of the Assembly.
Another reason he cited for not cooperating was that the UDF was still in agitation mode in the Sabarimala loot issue. "Since the last Assembly session, we have been campaigning both inside and outside the Assembly for the resignation of the devaswom minister and the dissolution of the Travancore Devaswom Board. We cannot cooperate," Satheesan said. He also questioned the sanctity of a statement in the Assembly when the entire details of the project were already out in the public domain.
In response, the CM wondered: "It beats me why the Opposition is so rattled. Since this is a historic achievement, we thought it fitting to officially let the world know of it through the Legislative Assembly."
Further, he also said that during his last press conference (September 27), when he made a mention of the Extreme Poverty Eradication Project, there was one more family left to be rehabilitated for the project to reach full realisation.
The CM's resolution said that the decision to eradicate extreme poverty was taken at the first Cabinet meeting of the 2021 LDF ministry. "This was a major promise given to voters during the election campaign," he said. The work to identify the extreme poor began within two months. "It began by ensuring the participation of people from all walks of life and collecting their feedback on how to go about the process," the CM said.
Eventually, after multiple stages of filtering, 1,03,099 (one lakh three thousand and ninety nine) individuals in 64,006 families spread over 1032 local bodies were declared as extreme poor.
